It’s never been a better time to be in the wicker business. Brands are capitalizing on the newfound interest in the woven art form as a forthcoming movie has people asking, “What if a basket could be a sexy man?”
The film, Wicker, which dropped its first trailer in early August, stars Olivia Colman as a lonely fisherwoman who commissions a husband to be made out of wicker. That husband is Alexander Skarsgård, who, despite being made out of wicker, begins a passionate relationship with his human wife.
The art house twist on romantasy already has people online dubbing it “50 shades of hay.”
A match woven in heaven
Rachel Karten, author of the popular newsletter Link in Bio, noted on X that the viral momentum around the film can be a “big opportunity for any brand that sells wicker furniture right now.”
Take Ikea’s latest social media campaign. On its official U.S. Instagram page, the furniture company posted an image of a wicker chair alongside the phrase “husband material.” The post was captioned: “We’ve got plenty of husband material. Be honest . . . how many times did you watch the trailer?”
Ikea Australia posted a similar photo, with a wicker bench next to the phrase “made from husband material.”
But even brands that don’t traffic in wicker are taking the opportunity to tap into the moment. “What we’d do to clean that chair,” the official Scrub Daddy Instagram page commented on Ikea’s post. Sephora joined in with a double entendre of its own: “We’d love to sit on that.”
Perhaps more surprising, even institutions like the New York Public Library have decided to get in on the joke, albeit in a more family-friendly way. The NYPL’s Instagram featured a carousel of books about basket weaving, with the cover image noting, “For Readers Suddenly Interested in Baskets (For absolutely no reason at all).”
While brands and companies trying to cash in on social media trends doesn’t always land, it seems users on social media are welcoming the wicker posts.
“Brilliant job nypl socials handler,” a user said on the NYPL’s Instagram. Another user commented on Ikea’s post, saying, “Well done Ikea.”
Time will tell whether wicker-mania will continue through the film’s October 23 limited-release date, or its wide release on October 30.